French Cherry Clafoutis (And How To Pit Cherries With A Straw)

Again a clafoutis, this time one with cherries for a very traditional French dessert. If it’s your first time making cherry clafoutis (say ‘kla-foo-tee’), you’ll be delighted to find out how easy it is to prepare, for a lot of payoff! Juicy cherries are layered in a buttered dish, topped with a creamy batter and baked in the oven. While we consider it as a simple country dessert, it is at the same time an elegant way to end a summer meal.

Clafoutis originates from the Limousin region in the south-central part of France. Traditional clafoutis is made with whole cherries. I emphasize whole, as for a lot of French cooks removing the pits is a sacrilège. It supposedly gives depth of flavour to the batter. I personally prefer pitting the cherries, so my clafoutis easier to eat (no spitting involved), all the more when having small children around the table.

Now how do you pit cherries without loosing part of the juice and tearing them apart?

I used to pit cherries with a paperclip, the classic trick when you don’t own a pitter. It does work but I always ended up with a messy kitchen counter. The best way is to use a reusable straw, glass or metal, strong enough to push the stones out!

I made that little video to show you how I do it (my very first blog video, yey! Would you like more?) Simply by pushing through the top of the cherry, the pit would come out cleanly from the other side, et voilà! It probably works with any straw, firm enough to pierce through a cherry (or else remember my pen trick).

The clafoutis batter is made with basic ingredients: eggs, sugar, flour, milk and a hint of vanilla. For this clafoutis I used a blend of almond flour and potato starch. Many of my friends have nuts intolerance, in which case I simply replace almond flour with rice or sorghum flour. You can also easily swap regular milk for a vegetal version, like cashew milk, my favorite. Clafoutis comes together in minutes, and after 45 minutes in the oven, you are rewarded with a heavenly scented kitchen and a wonderful dessert!

Instead of regular sugar I used a mix of coconut sugar and birch sugar. Note that coconut sugar will make your custard slightly darker, that’s why I use it for only half of the sugar quantity.

Other stone fruits would also work well in this dish, such as nectarine, my second favourite clafoutis flavour. Feel free to personalize your clafoutis!

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I’m Vanessa and this blog is about my discoveries and journey in the world of gluten free cuisine. Excluding gluten by no way means giving up on the food I love! My mission is to show that gluten free food can be delicious, ‘gourmand’, cheerful, beautiful… and to be shared with everyone! About Chocolate & Quinoa